Two of her novels,  Where Are the Children?  and  A Stranger Is Watching were made into feature films.

Mary Higgins Clark's fame as a writer was achieved against heavy odds. Born and raised in the Bronx, her father died when she was eleven and her mother struggled to raise her and her two brothers. On graduating from high school, she went to secretarial school, so she could get a job and help with the family finances. After three years of working in an advertising agency, travel fever seized her. For the year 1949, she was a stewardess on Pan American Airlines' international flights.

Left a young widow by the death of her husband from a heart attack in 1964, Mary went to work writing radio scripts and, in addition, decided to try her hand at writing books. Every morning, she got up at 5 AM and wrote until 7 AM, when she had to get her five children ready for school. Her very first book was a biographical novel about George Washington, inspired by a radio series she was writing, "Portrait of a Patriot."

Mary Higgins Clark's first suspense novel,  Where Are the Children?  was published by Simon & Schuster in 1975. It became a bestseller and marked a turning point in her life and career. It is currently in its 75 th edition in paperback and was re-issued in hardcover as a Simon & Schuster classic.

She is # 1 fiction bestselling author in France, where she received the Grand Prix de Literature Policière in 1980 and The Literary Award at the 1998 Deauville Film Festival. In 2000, she was named by the French Minister of Culture "Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters."

Mary Higgins Clark was chosen by Mystery Writers of America as Grand Master of the 2000 Edgar Awards.

Active in Catholic affairs, Mary Higgins Clark was made a Dame of the Order of St. Gregory the Great, a papal honor. She is also a Dame of Malta and a Lady of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem.

In 1996, Mary Higgins Clark married John Conheeney, the retired Chairman and CEO of Merrill-Lynch Futures. They live in Saddle River, New Jersey. Between them, they have seventeen grandchildren -- Mary's six and John's eleven.